


Destic Interlude

by pally (palliris)



Series: Hot Wired [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Established Relationship, Minor Character Death, Other, Punching, terrible no good hospital garb, tracers there for a millisecond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 12:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12432864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palliris/pseuds/pally
Summary: Zarya never realized just how out of touch she had become with her country of birth.(Russia is changing, but so is Zarya. She doesn't consider either to be a good thing.)





	Destic Interlude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hanktalkin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanktalkin/gifts).



> heck off ik destic is only an urban dic term, leave me alone
> 
> also no p0rn, sorry (itll be there in the next installment) still dedicated to hank for being fuckin rad

Zarya stares down at her coffee. It’s aroma is rich and caramel scented, with just a hint of cinnamon swirling about. The combination is almost too sweet for her, but she takes a sip of it anyways. 

The caffeine levels inside of it are fit to burst, ensuring she stays alert and tireless. Zarya thinks of her bed upstairs and almost goes to throw the whole entire mug in the sink. 

Almost. 

As it is, Zarya downs half of it in one go. It burns the back of her throat, just a bit, but it’s fine. Glancing around, the woman takes in how bereft the place is of life. This particular Overwatch base had the most current members stationed, but in the early hours (try four in the morning) it was virtually lifeless.

The silence down here makes her uncomfortable. She fills it with her own thoughts, and the buzz of the quiet roars in her ear. 

Zarya sips at the last portion of coffee silently, staring off into space. When she  _ does  _ start to get up, mug clasped in one hand, Zarya’s eyes catch on the ruffled edge of a newspaper. 

She looks away. 

The winding, metal stairs used to get from the communal floor to the private one seem to creak under her heavy footsteps. Each groan of it makes her tense, like they’re going to come out from under her at any second. Zarya thinks maybe they already have. 

She moves past the doors of her teammates with looking at them. Zarya already knows what they look like, decked out in various forms of self-expression. Her own had look mutely blank back when she had first joined, but when she comes to it she takes in the various stickers and omnic quotes mask-taped to it. 

Smiling very briefly, Zarya feels her stomach drop out when she clasps the doorknob, turning it slowly and resisting the urge to flee to the training quarters. 

_ “Weak,” _ she whispers to herself, turning the thought over in her mind. 

Although she had cleaned her room just two days ago, there’s already a pile of clothes near the door and a few haphazardly thrown tools laying around. Her eyes follow the trail of castaway machinery to the bed. 

Lynx is face down in the mattress, arms thrown under the pillow and their head pillowed directly on top of it. Zarya figures it would be a position she would find breathing trouble in, but-

Omnics don’t breathe. At least, she thinks they don’t. 

It’s nice, watching Lynx. They look all languid and relaxed, like a cat that’s been outside in the frigid cold just come in to sunbathe later. Against her own bitter feelings, Zarya feels herself smiling. The sight of Lynx looking so comfortable fills Zarya with a strange sort of warmth. 

“You going to just stand there all day?” Lynx asks, the pillow muffling the sound of their voice. It sounds tired and groggy, but still inviting. 

“If I must,” Zarya replies, peeling the velcro straps of her gloves off. 

She really  _ hadn’t  _ meant to get coffee. Training had been the first thing on her mind when she had gotten out of bed, untangling herself from the mess of flesh and machine that had filled up the entire space. 

But then Zarya had seen the news. It had caught her eye when she grabbed a cup of orange juice from the fridge, pushing aside the badly labeled containers of food and, in some cases, experiments, to get it. Zarya had noticed that the front page of the newspaper had been splashed with vivid colors as she walked to put the bottle cap to the juice on the table.

“Cold,” she murmurs when she sits on the edge of the bed. Her hand is enclosed around the metal bars that make up Lynx’s bicep, fingers twitching against it. Suppressing a shiver, Zarya crawls back under the covers. 

She traces the lines of Lynx’s back, following the metalwork and touching the small disk in the small of their back with her fingernails. It makes a satisfying, tapping sound that helps Zarya relax a little bit. 

Lynx is real; her touch can attest to that. They move and flex under her hand, reacting to outside stimuli like any blood-pumping flesh might. When she looks back up at Lynx’s face, they have turned to look at her. The light of their diodes is almost weak in the early morning hours, but they still have an attentiveness to them that sets Zarya at ease. 

Zarya doesn’t say anything to their inquiring gaze. She just moves closer, placing her head so that it rests against the same pillow. Foreheads touching, she closes her eyes to the silence. 

This is fine. This silence is less of the oppressive one that had chased her out of the communal area, and more towards the end of a comfortable quiet. But it can’t last forever, though. 

“What’s wrong, Zarya?” Lynx’s voice is so, so soft, but not with pity. Not because they don’t believe Zarya is weak, or because she needs the comfort. Lynx does it because they care, but not in some tangible way; more so in the way that Lynx brings their own hand up to clasp Zarya’s and she  _ knows _ that Lynx will be here, forever and always. Not waiting for her, but just  _ being. _ “Zarya?”

“Thank you,” she cuts them off before they can get another thought out.  _ For being you, for actually caring, for being my rock when Russia stopped-  _ “The news. It’s- it’s not good.” 

Zarya tries not to look uncertain, but she knows she must. Her mind is laden with heavy thoughts, one flicking to the next in rapid succession. Lynx just waits through the whole process, patient and tired and beautiful. 

“Katya Volskaya’s daughter is-” Zarya starts, but chokes in the middle of it. Her voice is still tremulous when she starts again. “Volskaya’s daughter is dead. Kidnapped and held for ransom before being murdered.”

The truth of the matter is, Zarya doesn’t feel the pain of an innocent life. She wants so badly to feel like her own life has been taken from her when a girl, a daughter, is dead for a misguided cause. But in reality, the thing that hurts Zarya the most is the fact that she found this out through a  _ newspaper. _

She had jolted, once she realized how out of touch Russia had become from her. Zarya hasn’t visited the place in over a year now, not even for a mission. The inability to speak with the country had hurt her in the beginning of her station at Overwatch, but over time the loss had been replaced and made better-  _ stronger- _ through her experiences with Lynx. 

Russia was her home, once. Now it’s just a shallow shell of a piece of memory she refuses to let go of. 

Lynx turns over onto their side, but still stays connected to Zarya through their held hands. There’s a slight bend in their neck, like they’re trying to come off as listening, despite their lack of ears. 

Zarya swallows. “I’m not in contact with her anymore; haven’t been since I finally left. You probably already know that, though,” she continues, and Lynx nods. “I don’t know what is going to happen to Russia, right now, but-”

She has to pause again to hold back a few tears, because she’s stronger than that. 

“I hope they make it through, and come out on a different side. It’s not a reasonable hope, but if anyone knows how to sway public opinion, it’s Katya.” 

Zarya laughs bitterly. Even now, wrapped up in blankets and safe in bed next to the one thing she considers a home, Zarya still feels a pull towards it.  _ All _ of it. The nosy old grandmothers who would make her pastries and her neighbors who liked to send her on playdates with their own daughter. The Russian military and how they accepted her stern personality and knack for overextending herself. The status and power she held, the respect she had garnered. 

The solidarity of a country tied to its own beliefs. 

_ (But that’s not true, now is it?) _

A long, steely pause follows that. Then-

“We are alive,” Lynx finally says, palm resting on her cheek and their thumb running over her chin. “We are  _ alive.” _

And once upon a time Zarya would have vehemently denied that; said that no omnic was truly alive and that the expressionless, cold metal was just a farce, a blemish on humanity. 

But now, all she sees is the way Lynx’s diodes pulsate comfortingly, sensor ears twitching, gathering and processing information at a millionth of a second, the slight movement of their head as they express boundless amounts of emotion and thoughts all at once, never static. Zarya has no idea how anyone or anything could create something so complex and amazing, and anyone who thought otherwise was incredibly wrong. 

She’s moving before she can even think, unwinding their arms so she can clasp the sides of Lynx’s face. Zarya knows it’s not the most accurate, but she presses a tight, chaste kiss where the chin plate hooks up and mimics the line of a mouth.

Making a sound akin to a satisfied sigh, Lynx wraps their arms around Zarya’s body. They chase her mouth back in with an attentive eagerness. She hums against the metal plating, trailing a line of kisses up their face until she reaches Lynx’s eyes.

She stops, there. Gazes at them through her own tired eyelids, exhausted. Places a kiss above either eye, tender. Makes the moment last, forever. 

Because Zarya knows things are really going to start gaining speed after this, and not just for herself.

* * *

The next few days pass by in a dull rush of board meetings and bouts of sleep that seem altogether too long and too short at the same time. Lynx has to leave briefly to go reestablish a tech center located near their next drop point, and won’t be back for another few days.

(The center is stationed in Russia, and the only reason Zarya had let them go there was because they were able to take Tracer too. Despite her wariness to the idea of it all, Tracer hadn’t hesitated to give her a good arm-slap and tell her that in no means necessary would she let anything happen to the omnic. In Russia. Where omnics were now even more badly hated.)

News of everything filtered to her in varying amounts. She sees more clippings from the newspaper when she walks into the boardroom, the pin wall slowly filling up with more and more images of a little girl she might have been able to know, once. 

Overwatch hasn’t figured out if the omnic terrorist pointed out as the perpetrator was the actual culprit or a scapegoat, but the chances of it being the latter is astronomical. She doesn’t know which she would rather it be; a ploy of the government, or the truth. 

She would think about it, but she doesn’t truly want to, so-

Zarya punches. 

Training is usually calming to her, the rhythmic tempo of it pulling her mind into a quiet zone. She loves the feeling of immersing herself into her own head. 

Now, it just feels like there’s a storm inside of her that won’t die down. It rushes through her brain, knocks and flares against her skull like raging winds. 

Zarya wishes that Lynx were here to keep everything at bay, but for all that Zarya wants to forget everything that’s happened in the past few weeks, she’s still somewhat reasonable with herself. 

She doesn’t stop, not even when she wants to. There’s something distinctly satisfying about working herself up, meddling with her inner core and pushing it, stretching it until she’s about to snap.

Zarya grits through the pain behind her eyes. 

It builds up slowly as she trains, layer on top of layer. She just wants to throw away the punching bag and be done with it, but it won’t help her to mess her self-imposed schedule up. 

She continues on like that, for seconds and minutes and hours. When she wants to stop, Zarya just swelters on. 

“Damnit,” she curses, rubbing at the space between her eyes. Her breath is harsh and unrestrained in the empty training room, heart rate skyrocketing. She can barely feel her fingers anymore against the numbness that’s slowly spreading throughout her body. 

The pain keeps rearing its ugly head, crescendoing in her ears and shooting through her temple. Zarya keeps up the intensity, never stopping and working past the rushing ache that floods her senses. She keeps punching, and punching, and punching-

And then she’s gasping against the roughness of her knuckles splitting, head feeling like it’s being cracked open with a sledgehammer. She doesn’t cry out, but it’s a close thing. 

Zarya doesn’t know how long she stands there, quietly trying to catch her breath and leaning on the sand-filled bag. Dimly aware of something wet flowing on top of her upper lip, Zarya swipes a shaky hand across her face. 

When she pulls her hand back, she looks down and notices a flash of red on her fingers. Zarya feels disoriented enough that she doesn’t know whether or not she’s fully comprehending any of this. 

It’s like there’s a hazy film wrapped around her face; a loose gauze that tapers off at the back of her neck. She reaches up, scratching a hand across her eyes like she can tear it off of her. All that seems to do is add to the pain, so she keeps scratching in an attempt to be able to see clearly. 

All she gets is an even more muddied vision, hands coming away practically soaking in a deep, lustrous red. There’s something nagging at the back of her mind that she can’t quite place, but it slips and drops away, almost mimicking her blood that’s slowly falling to the floor. 

She thinks she sees a shadowy figure in front of her, small, wobbly arm outstretched and Zarya so badly wants to reach out as well, but she’s too tired, too worn out, too  _ exhausted- _

Zarya’s goes down, feeling light as a feather. 

* * *

Zarya wakes up.

Well, maybe not. There’s a vague sense of distortion to her sense that she can’t quite place. She supposes she might be dreaming, but when her she goes to lift her hand all she can do is twitch her fingers. There’s a sense of realness to the feeling of the clothes on her back and her hair on her face that she can’t quite shake off. She lets her body relax into what she assumes is a bed, and catalogues her experience. 

The clothes she is in are scratchy, and terribly uncomfortable. Hospital garb, maybe? The pillow and bed itself feel nice, though, so she might just be in a new change of clothes. Which is, quite frankly, a bit worrying. 

She has no idea where she is, or how long she’s been out. There’s a slight pinprick on the joint of her right arm, so she must be hooked up to an IV. Her right hand slowly starts losing its numbness as she forces blood to circulate again. She tries doing the same thing to her other hand, but-

That’s when she notices a warmth in the other hand. She tries to move those as well, and is happy when she gives an even more pronounced twitch. The warmth doesn’t take notice of her actions immediately, so she tries again. 

And again, and again, and again, until she’s practically enclosing the rough object with force. Peeling her eyes open with the most careful scrutiny, Zarya slowly bites back against the feeling of dull, yet sharp and intense pain at the first hint of light. 

She tries to speak, but all that comes out is a low, pained groan. 

Now  _ that  _ gets the attention of whoever is here. 

“Zarya?” It sounds worried, loving, and terribly happy. “Are you awake?”

She rolls her tongue around her mouth to get rid of the grit there, eyes focusing and unfocusing. After opening her mouth once or twice, she finally dredges up her voice from deep within her chest. 

_ “Fuck.” _

The voice comes back instantly, tone even more concerned, asking, “What’s wrong, Zarya? Is there anything I can do?” 

Mustering up the last of her strength, she turns her head. The first thing Zarya notices is the slight glare of the sunlight’s reflection, but she squints past that. When her eyes finally completely focus, she immediately recognizes who is sitting at her bedside. 

“Lynx,” Zarya murmurs, and starts coughing into the air. The air scratches against her dry, arid throat. “Wh’re…?” 

“Medbay on site,” they reply instantly. “You’ve been out for four days, and Mercy says you were severely dehydrated, which exacerbated all of your other wounds.” 

Lynx looks tired and worn out, for all that they can. There’s a slight dent in their forehead, and it makes Zarya fret. She tries to push herself up, but she makes it an inch off of the bed before Lynx is pushing her back down. 

Even now, she can tell her strength is returning to her again. 

“Hurt?” Zarya asks, eyebrows pinched.

_ “Me?” _ Lynx questions incredulously. “Zarya, you’re stuck on a  _ hospital bed. _ I got back from my mission perfectly fine.”

To prove them wrong, Zarya lifts her right hand and points at Lynx’s forehead. They look moderately confused for a second, before she turns on her side to reach Lynx’s body. She rubs at the spot where there’s a small indentation in the metal, like a bad bruise. 

“This? Zarya, this is nothing-”

“N’t nothin’,” she murmurs tiredly, annoyed that they would say such a thing.  _ “Everythin’.” _

Lynx just shakes their head fondly, sensors twitching and perking up. She watches them do it behind slowly closing eyes as her hand drops back down, limp. 

She can feel the strength slowly coming back to her limbs, but her eyes feel so, so heavy and nothing can stop them from shutting. It takes her a few minutes to fall back asleep, but Lynx is there, stroking her palm with their thumb and rubbing their face into her neck, and Zarya feels safe. 

She dreams. 


End file.
